As we leave Carter’s car and walk along the sidewalk toward the house, Carter is talking about some Hargrove swimmer who shaved two seconds off his backstroke, like I care about sports. I nod with a dumb fake smile on my face.
Just smile like everything is fine.
Last time I walked this path, I was nervous about my shirt. (I was such an idiot then.)
“You’re gonna love what they did with the lights,” Carter says. He’s got that puppy-before-a-car-ride energy. “Totally different vibe from last time.”
“Nice,” I say. I give another fake smile.
I’ve been getting pretty good at this smile because there have been plenty of opportunities to rehearse it these past few days. At home, at breakfast with Mom, in the hallway with June. I smiled and they believed me because people see what they want to see, and what they want is for me to be fine. So I gave them fine. And they accepted the lie and went back to their lives without me.
(They always do.)
I glance at the groups on the lawn. Parties. All the same. People getting drunk, hooking up, pretending the noise makes them alive. Everyone here thinks what they have is real. These twenty-year-olds are convinced their Friday night hookup is love, convinced their relationship will last beyond next semester. It won’t. Half of them won’t remember who they were dating in college by the time they’re thirty. They’ll age and settle into loveless marriages, have kids because the timeline said so, and stare across kitchen islands at strangers they chose when they were too young to know what choosing meant. Just like Mom. She had a daughter she wanted and a son she didn’t, and she stayed, smiled, and made waffles in the morning because that’s what you do when you’ve committed to a life you only halfway chose.
“Earth to Aeron.” Carter waves a hand in front of my face as we get closer to the entrance.
“Sorry. Thinking about a project.”
“Man, you’re always thinking about a project. Tonight is aboutfun.” He grips my shoulders and shakes me playfully.
“Yeah.” I grin at him. “Fun.”
That’s what life is, right?
Fun?
Tonight the whole place pulses neon. Pink and blue pour from every window and run down the front of the house in bands of electric color, and the people on the porch glow like they’ve been rendered in a game cutscene. Cotton-candy pink on one side, ultraviolet blue on the other. No strobes. The light is continuous, unblinking, turning everyone into painted versions of themselves.
“See?” Carter spreads his arms. “Cyberpunk.”
I resist the urge to roll my eyes because it’s a very June thing to do.
Inside, the neon is everywhere. There are LED strips along the walls and ceiling in parallel lines of pink and blue, turning every surface into a gradient. Faces glow. Drinks glow. Vape smoke catches the color and hangs in the air.
In a room where nothing is its real color, I can be anyone.
Carter finds his crowd—Hargrove bros near the living room, backward caps, loud voices. He slides into their circle the way he always does, and within seconds the group absorbs him like he was always part of it. I linger at the periphery, hands in my jacket pockets, watching through the neon haze.
He pulls me in. Introduces me to people whose names dissolve the instant they leave their mouths. Someone asks what year I am. I say freshman. They nod. They turn back to their friends. Carter hooks his arm around my shoulder and drags me to another cluster of bros.
“This is my cousin Aeron. He’s at Alaria. He’s an artist.”
They say “Nice,” or “Cool,” or “Sick, bro,” and their teeth glow pink when they smile.
I drift behind him like a satellite, nodding. Pretending to listen. Someone hands me a drink—beer, I guess—so I raise the red cup to my lips at regular intervals without swallowing.
After almost an hour of this shit, Carter pulls out a joint.
I blink. The neon catches the paper, turning it pinkish. “Why do you have that?” I ask.
He drops it in my hand. “Got it for you. Thought you might want one since you haven’t been hanging out in the basement smoking lately.”
I stare because Carter hates weed—hates the smell and the culture—but he brought this for me.
The jaggedness eases out of me at the kind gesture. I take it from him and turn it over between my fingers. The paper is rolled tight by someone who knew what they were doing. Maybe Carter took it from Dorien’s stash.
“Thanks,” I say.
